Credit card fraud results in millions of dollars of loss for credit card issuing companies and/or for merchants. Preventing credit card fraud is an ongoing challenge for credit card companies and merchants. When a credit card is stolen or lost, the customer may call the issuing company to report the loss. However, a thief may make hundreds or thousands of dollars in unauthorized purchases before the theft is noticed or reported.
Existing theft measures include requiring the customer to sign a receipt and ensuring that the signature matches a signature panel on the back of the card. But, signatures are not required for all transactions. Moreover, signatures may be easily forgeable. Another existing theft measure is to require a photo identification to verify the identity of the purchaser. However, in some jurisdictions, it is illegal for merchants to demand cardholder identification.
The drawings have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be expanded or reduced to help improve the understanding of the embodiments of the present disclosure. Similarly, some components and/or operations may be separated into different blocks or combined into a single block for the purposes of discussion of some of the embodiments of the present disclosure. Moreover, while embodiments of the present disclosure are amenable to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are described in detail below. The intention, however, is not to limit the disclosure to the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the disclosure is intended to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the disclosure.